


If travel is searching, and home what's been found

by fid_gin



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 18:53:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8068813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fid_gin/pseuds/fid_gin
Summary: While it's unconventional and others would certainly find it strange, this is what they need.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I add "Howl" by Florence and the Machine to my Beth/Daryl playlist on Spotify, lol. Rated M for swearing and allusions to hot, grimey forest sex. :)
> 
> Assumes that Beth is alive and with them in Alexandria, and everything is just hunky dory, *hand-wavey explanations*
> 
> Title taken from the song "Hunter" by Björk

He taught her how to track, and he taught her well.

How it always happens is this:

Beth will wake in her own house and her own bed, because they don't share, not yet. Even though it's highly unlikely that anyone (except maybe Maggie) would care, it's still important to them for some reason to keep their...whatever this is, secret. Hence, the trips to the woods.

She'll wake and she can tell immediately that he's been there. Like everyone in Alexandria she leaves her front door unlocked in case of emergencies – not that she thinks a locked door could stop Daryl anyway.

A dusty boot print. Her open bedroom door. He leaves small clues like these for her to find...nothing too explicit because that would spoil the game, but more obvious than _he_ would need for sure.

She'll grab her knife and leave by the gate, telling the guard she's going hunting. Well, it's true.

Sometimes she thinks she sees a smirk on the guard's face, depending on who it is that day. Maggie usually gives her crap about going out on her own, Eugene might rattle off some obscure weather facts pointing to the likelihood of her getting caught in the rain, the native Alexandrians will just give her smiles that don't _quite_ reach their eyes and tell her to be safe...but someone like Abraham will make a sly comment that, with as much as they both seem to love hunting, she ought to take _Daryl_ with her. And if it's Michonne or Rick, they'll just look at her very closely before opening the gate. They're too good at reading people, those two.

But no one's called her out on it. Not yet.

Outside the gates, there's that terrifying and exhilarating untethered feeling that comes with being free, but also being vulnerable. And it scalds her soul that she thinks of being outside the gate as 'freedom' - _these_ are the good people she'd assured Daryl still existed. And yet...and yet... She feels like she and the rest of her group wear their years of misery on the outside, like they're all escaped prisoners still walking around with broken shackles hanging from their wrists, and these people who took them in can _see_ those shackles. One day they'll rust and fall off, she hopes, but until that day it's in the looks people give her, the way they talk to her. _You're tainted, and we're afraid of catching our death._

Not that she considers herself some victim, some _dead girl_ \- she can take care of herself just fine. But the day you get too sure of yourself is the day you end up torn apart or worse, as she's seen far too many times. Best to always be on the defensive.

She'll pick up his trail quickly. Again, she's sure if he wanted to, Daryl could leave no tracks at all and just vanish into the trees, but he's slightly more overt for her sake. He _wants_ her to find him. Just, not too fast.

Beth will walk slowly and quietly like he showed her, eyes on the ground, ears open. She might hear thunder, birds, a squirrel scolding her from a high tree branch. Occasionally she'll hear the shambling footsteps of walkers, and if it's just one she'll circle it and plunge her knife into the back of its skull. Sometimes she feels eyes on her...she knows he watches her, watches _over_ her, protecting her from afar and maybe just enjoying toying with her a little bit. That's part of it, too.

Because she's the hunter, but she's also the hunted.

Branches will scratch her face and arms, her boots will get caked with dirt and mud, sweat and dust will streak her face...she knows she looks awful, but he likes her dirty. Sometimes, after hours, she'll consider giving up, just going back to town, back to her house. Screw Daryl and these twisted trysts he's sucked her into...why can't they just date and _fuck_ like normal people, why does everything have to be tinged with blood and fear and survival and the smell of leather and moss and leaves? But she knows it's because the _world_ isn't normal, and that's not what she wants either. She fell in love with the wild in him, and how he brings it out in _her_.

She'll only find him when he wants her to, when it's near dark and she's exhausted and hungry, and even then it's more the other way around – she'll hear a noise and spin around with her knife at the ready, and there he'll be, pointing his crossbow at her. They'll make a big show out of stalking, circling each other for a moment, then weapons will be thrown aside and they'll fall on each other.

On the ground, up against a tree – any way she's going back to Alexandria later with grass and leaves stuck to her disheveled clothes, hickeys that she arranges her mussed hair to hide and reeking of sex, and Daryl will come back a short time after her. There's no way the others can't know, but maybe that's a conversation no one else wants to have either: how this happened and what happens next.

If their paths cross in the street later, she'll smile and he'll nod and they'll each pretend for the sake of anyone who might be watching that they _aren't_ imagining what they did to the other hours before. But it's in his eyes and the way he looks like he could eat her alive, and it's in her blush when she remembers how he's done exactly _that_.

One day, when those shackles she thought of before are gone, she'll take his hand in public, or just walk up and kiss him. One day he'll take her out with him on one of his scouting trips, and she'll sit on the back of his bike, wrap her arms around his waist and rest her chin on his shoulder. One day he'll move his few belongings into her house, or vice versa, and the rest of Alexandria will find them an odd couple, but somehow _right_. One day this will be Home. But for now, while it's unconventional and others would certainly find it strange, this is what they need.

And if anyone asks her later if she caught anything good that day, she'll smile secretively, try not to look at Daryl if he's nearby, and say yeah, she did, she hopes she'll go out again tomorrow, too.


End file.
